Unlike in the past when a
story is the result of Windstar’s Canadian brain, frozen by ice and snow and
overfilled with images of hockey, I really have to blame Sparky.

Yada, yada… demons,
monsters, and gore, Oh My!Yada, yada…
same-sex relationship being thrust into your face unashamedly.Yada, yada… the story and its characters are
the sole property of the authors, stealing them would result in me unleashing
Sparky on you.

A big thanks to Ken for
going through it and dealing with all of our seemingly endless spelling and
grammar issues.

The Devil and Carson Mahoney (aka The Devil Made Me Do It)

By Zee and Windstar

The music was loud and screaming, just like her soul, Carson would
say if she was feeling melodramatic; which she was.It was Thanksgiving and in typical dysfunctional fashion she was
getting drunk in a bar, rather than being drunk at home, and that beat being
drunk in public, but the night was young so it was entirely possible that she
could be drunk in public later.Actually she had been planning on sipping wine and trying to be charming
at Sam’s parents, but her plans had sort of fallen through.

In reality Sam had dumped her.

“Jesus you going to sit there and
look like somebody kicked your kitten.Or are you going to shoot pool?”

Carson turned and looked at her
opponent across the pool table.Fascinated by the woman’s ability to speak, yet not lose the cigarette
clinging to her bottom lip.It just
bobbed up and down punctuating points as she spoke.The woman just stared at her and then made a gesture at the
table.

Tearing her eyes away from the
dancing cigarette, Carson leveled the pool cue to the table and lined up her
shot.“That ball over there is going
somewhere.”She called out.She drew her arm back and then reversed
direction.

“See I told you, you’d have
fun.”Emily’s voice came out of
nowhere; scaring the crap out of her, and her shot went wild.

“Emily!” she hissed out.

“What?”

She gestured to the pool table.

“You and Lou having a good time?”

“Who is Lou?” Carson asked.

The woman across the pool table with
the cigarette attached to her lip waved.

“Oh.Yes, our time together has been enjoyable.”She was fairly certain Lou didn’t give two
shits.

Lou just grunted and bent over to
take her shot.Carson watched the smoke
from the cigarette with fascination; the smoke split and curled up around both
sides of the woman’s face then up towards the ceiling.It gave the woman the illusion of having
smoky horns and made her look demonic in the grimy lighting of the bar.

“Come dance with me.”

Carson looked away from the table
where Lou was sinking balls with ease to her friend.“Emily, I’m not really the dancing type.”

“Carson, have you looked at the
dance floor, most of those people out there aren’t the dancing type.”

She glanced over to the writhing pit
of human existence that was lit up on frantic occasions with splashes of red
and purple.True, she wouldn’t call
what they were doing dancing.It was a
cross between and orgy and some sort of primal primitive war dance.“Okay, point to you.”

“So,” Emily threw her arms around
Carson’s neck and stood up on her tip toes bring their faces intimately
together.“Come out there and dance
with me.”

For a moment Carson was tempted to
kiss her friend, Emily would probably be the best thing ever to happen to her,
but she and Sam had this thing, and she had a rule about fucking her
friends.“Emily” She said sadly.

Emily gave a weak smile and let her
arms slid off Carson’s neck.“Hey, I
get it.You don’t dance.”She reached a hand up and grabbed Carson’s
chin turning it to the left.“But see
that group of wanna be Goth’s I’m betting one of them does.”

Carson kissed Emily’s hand and let
it go.“You go get ‘em tiger.”

She watched Emily bounce off.

“Regrets are a pisser, you sure you
want to let the opportunity go?” Her pool opponent with the smoky horns
asked.

She didn’t reply just took her eyes
off of Emily’s ass and looked at the table.“You ran the table.”

Lou just nodded.

“Fine I’ll rack.”

The evening progressed with the
music getting louder, the bar getting more crowded, and Carson getting
drunker.She had run out of quarters
shortly before midnight and Lou had decided that the good time between them was
over.So now she was relegated to a
dark corner next to the bar drinking warm beer that was the draft special for
the night.But she wasn’t thinking
about Samantha anymore.

Emily had found two noble suitors
for the evening, Carson had dubbed them Adam and Eve in her head; they were
your standard Gothic fair with the black late century clothes, black lipstick,
and black nails.She had no idea if
Emily was into threesomes, but she doubted it.At the rate things were going she was willing to bet that Eve was going
to be the winner at the end of the night; she was up by three dances to Adams
one.

Noticing the objects of her musing
headed her way she tried to straighten up on the bar stool but ended falling
off.

With a concentrated effort she
staggered to her feet as Emily flitted over with her two new toys.Carson leaned against the bar in an attempt
to look cool and reached for her half gone beer only to lose out as Emily
snagged it and took a healthy swallow.

“You sure you don’t want to come out
and dance with us?” Emily asked batting her eyes.

“Come on you’ll enjoy it,” the guy
said while trying to grind against her.

She looked over at him with a
slightly disgusted look on her face.“If you don’t stop that I’m taking you to the vet and having you fixed.”

He blinked at her not getting what
she’d said, but he stopped trying to hump her.

Emily handed Carson back her
beer.“From what I understand it
doesn’t really fix the problem.Come on
Carson please.”Emily tried again.

“Really Emily I’m just not in the
mood to get my grove on.”

Emily leaned against the bar facing
her.“Sam’s a bitch.”

Carson chuckled and missed her mouth
then wiped spilt beer off of her chin, “That’s not a news flash.”

“But to dump you right before the
holidays, because she was embarrassed to introduce you to her folks….”

“We don’t know why she dumped me,
she never really said.”

“Carson, when she said the words
‘I’m not comfortable with you meeting my folks’.That was a pretty big clue.”

“But ‘not comfortable’ and
‘embarrassed’ are two totally different words.”

Their conversation was interrupted
by the young man.“Are we going to
dance more or what?”

Emily turned her head, her ponytails
bouncing on either side of her head.“Hey,
why don’t you be a dear and go get me a drink.Okay?”

He nodded eagerly and left.

She turned her attention back to
Carson.“So she’s a bitch and you
should be celebrating your freedom.”

“I’m celebrating.”She lifted her glass and shouted “Woo hoo to
freedom.”The three equally as drunk
people around her cheered too and slammed their drinks.

“Another round for freedom girl,” Emily said getting the
bartenders attention and slapped some bills down.She then grabbed the young Goth girl’s hand and led her out onto
the dance floor.

A few seconds later the boy that she’d mentally dubbed ‘Adam’ came
back with some drink colored a nauseating purple.“Where’d they go?”

“Girls room said something about you joining them.”

His eyes got huge, and she snagged the drink out of his hand,
before he could race off.

Thirty seconds later she was leaning against the bar taking turns
sipping from the drink in her left hand and then from the one in her right,
when security escorted ‘Adam’ out of the bar.

Half way done with both drinks Emily and ‘Eve’ emerged sweaty from
the dance floor.“Hey you ready to go?”

“Sure.”Carson responded
before she quickly tried to down both drinks.

“Eve and her friends are going to try and raise a demon,” Emily
said and some nauseating purple colored drink went down the wrong pipe causing
Carson to choke.

“You’re more than welcome to join us.You know, the more the merrier,” the wanna be Goth girl said
perkily.

Carson caught the negative headshake and the rude gesture to what
Emily hoped she’d be getting out of a demon raising.

“Nah, that’s okay.Raising
demons always gives me gas, so why don’t you run me home, Emily, and then you
go have fun with you’re new young friend here.”

Emily stuck out her tongue.

----------------------------------------------

An old-fashioned hospital ambulance that had been painted black
stopped outside a tired old house with a weed choked front lawn.The car door opened and a figure tumbled out
on to the gravel drive way.After a
moment the figure said, “I’m okay.”

The driver side window rolled down and Emily’s darkly dyed locks
poked out, “You sure?I can walk you to
the door?”

“Nah,” Carson said stumbling to her feet.“I’m good.”

“You sure.”

“Yep, go raise some hell, er, demons, or whatever.”

“’Kay.See you at work.”

“Yep.”Carson turned and
waved as Emily drove away.

She took a step back and fell over the broken fence she had been
meaning to fix for her mom, for about 4 months now.All alone in the dark with dawn hours away, she stared up at the
cloud covered sky.There was no noise;
only the silence of a broken down suburban street.

Without any distractions, she couldn’t help but think of Sam.Perhaps she should have seen the break up
coming; it wasn’t like they had a lot in common.Self admittedly she was gregarious, loud, charming, witty, enjoyed
going out to clubs, drinking, and having a good time.Sam was uptight, hated people, loved her books, enjoyed staying
in and never drank.They were just too
different, they didn’t really talk more like pushed each other’s button’s until
they were making out on the couch, and she couldn’t say they were together
because the sex was great; because they hadn’t had any.Sam was very big on waiting because she
didn’t want to make the same mistake she made with her ex.That was another thing, Heather, Sam’s bitch
of an ex.She was always being compared
to Heather.If they hadn’t broken up
she was just about to drive down to LA and strangle the bitch, well, at least
slash her tires.

She lifted up a sleeve and wiped away the couple of tears that had
run down her cheeks.

Her little pity party was broken up by the sound of her mother
cursing.“God damn piece of shit
car! I can have you made into little tiny cans to hold Vienna sausages!”

Carson almost gagged, as she could almost smell the horrible
things.She slowly regained her feet
and walked over to the cracked driveway.“Mom?”

Her mom was of course drunk; it wasn’t Sunday so it was a forgone
conclusion.In the dim light from the
kitchen window she could make out her mother’s messed up graying hair, she was
at least dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, and on her feet was wearing her
yellow Homer Simpson slippers that Carson had gotten her last Christmas.In her right hand she held a hairbrush,
which she was attempting to use to unlock the car.

“What? You better not be no
zombie, I’ll blast your ass back to hell.Ungrateful living dead, living on the tit of government welfare; you may
be dead but you can get a job like anyone else.At least you don’t need medical coverage….” Her mother
rambled on.

Carson closed one eye hoping it
would help things make more sense.It
really didn’t help.Things were still
weird.“No, mom, it’s me.”After a couple of seconds where her mom just
stared at her confused, she added, “Carson, your eldest.”

Her mother’s mouth split into a
grin.“Carson how are you? Were
you out with that Pam girl?”

“It's Sam, and no, we’re not dating
anymore.”

“Oh that’s too bad, but it’s for the
best dear.She would have just ended up
dead, you know we’re cursed.”

Carson pinched the bridge of her
nose, and decided a change in topic was in order.“Where are you going?”

“It’s the day after Thanksgiving I’m
going shopping.”

Carson hit the display on her
cellphone.“It’s 3AM.”

“If you want to get the deals you
need to get in line early.”

“Mom you’re drunk, you shouldn’t be
driving.Especially with the hairbrush,
I don’t think you’ll get too far.”

“Fine you drive.”

Carson caught the hairbrush and
looked at her mom and then the car.Guess she was going to be drunk in public.

Somehow
from the pit that was Carson’s mind she was able to pull out some good judgment
and use it.She called a cab to come
pick them up, she was way too drunk to drive and well her mom was mom.

She
had pulled her mother out of the cab and paid the driver, when she turned
around and saw the line for the still dark and unopened store.“Great googly moogly, they selling crack
here.”

“No,
no.They just have a great deal for the
first hour they are open.They have a
computer and a printer for a hundred bucks.”

Carson
blinked and looked at her mom.“You’re
kidding.”

“Nope.”Her mother slapped the crumpled ad in her
hand.

“This
has to be a scam,” she muttered.

They
took their places at the end of the line with the rest of the scruffy, red-eyed
people who looked like they would be a lot happier in bed, asleep.

After
an hour, Carson was dozing on her feet, swaying slightly back and forth, when a
group of ten people showed up and started walking to the front of the
line.People began to mutter darkly,
waking her up.She snorted and opened
an eye, “What’s going on?”

“I
can’t believe it.Those people just cut
in line,” her mother said tersely.

“What?”
She hadn’t been standing here for an hour for a bunch of mouth breathers to
come up half hour before the store opened and cut to the front of the line.

“Go
talk to them.Make them get to the
end.I won’t get my computer,” her
mother whined.

Carson
shook her head to clear the cobwebs.“Uh, mom, that one guy is like six-foot.”

“So?Didn’t you take on a city full of zombies?”

Wow,
her mom had been paying attention to her, was all Carson could think of as she
got out of line and walked to the front.

She
cleared throat and said.“Excuse me.”

The
people ignored her.

“Hey,
excuse me.”

A big guy turned and looked at
her smirking. “What?”

“Do
you think you’re more important than anybody else here?”

He
blinked in surprise not expecting that.“Uh, no.But see our friend here
was saving us a place in line.”

“So
you think its fair that you and your buddies just show and flounce your way to
the front of the line, pissing the rest of us off.”The people behind her were cheering her on and adding their own
comments.

“Well,
life isn’t fair.”Was the guy’s only
comeback before he turned his back on her.

Some
irate person behind Carson picked up a small rock and threw it at the guy,
hitting him in the shoulder.Starting a
rather painful chain of events for Carson.He turned around, his brows furrowed, and there was a very clear look of
murder in his eyes.

“Shit,”
was all Carson got out before a haymaker knocked her to the ground.She was going to feel that in morning.

After
a moment, when her eyeballs stopped rattling around in her head, she got up to
find that the angry muttering had turned into an angry mob, and in the distance
she could hear sirens.The big guy
swatted a couple of smaller guys off of him and picked Carson up by her shirt.

Nope
she sure wasn’t thinking about Sam anymore, that woman was completely out of
her head, especially how she’d rather be on Sam’s ratty couch arguing over
something stupid; like the way she ate popcorn.Her eye was already swelling shut and she could taste blood.As he started to swing again she thought,
“There’s no way Emily’s night is topping this.”

-----------------------------------------------

There
was smoke, and people were screaming.The pentagram on the floor was on fire, the flames a disturbing oily
black color and a demon with skin the color of a dead fish and horns the size
or her forearm sprouting out of its back was currently tearing apart a little
wanna be demon raiser.

Emily
turned her head and watched her so called date for the evening running off
towards the door screaming.She sighed,
well fuck, this probably meant she wasn’t getting laid.

That
was her last coherent thought of the night.

----------------------------------------------------------

Samantha Sakamoto was in hell.

Not literally, but the raven-haired
Asian woman was positive that someone in hell was having more fun than she was
at that exact moment.She’d only been
home for a day and she was already dreaming of some way to escape.

“Samantha!”

Narrowly avoiding spitting out the
wine she’d just been sipping, Samantha looked up from the piece of tablecloth
she’d been studying to find her entire family staring at her.Mentally groaning she plastered on the best
smile she could and looked to the source of that loud call, her mother.

“Yes Mother?”

“I said; pass the peas to your
father.He wants some.”

Her father, seated on the other side
of the table, didn’t look like he wanted any such thing, but he did take the
formal silver bowl with the peas and obediently ladled some onto his dish.The older man of obvious Japanese decent
went back to eating his meal silently; content to eat without getting involved
in the family bickering.

“Really Samantha, can’t you pay
attention for more than two seconds without drifting off?”

The matriarch of the family sat at
the other end of the table from her father, dressed in one of her best dresses,
wearing makeup and her good jewelry.It
was Thanksgiving after all; everyone was expected to be dressed up for the
Sakamoto family dinner.Samantha was
positive that her mother had gotten her hair done the day before and her nails.

“I bet she was thinking about one of
her books again.”A younger version of
her father quipped from opposite Samantha.

“Samantha.”Her mother used the disappointed tone of
voice that the younger woman was all too familiar with “You have to get your
head out of the clouds and apply yourself.Why can’t you be more like your brother Jonathan?”

Her brother gave her a victorious
smile “I forgot to tell you mother, I think I’ve decided to go for Internal
Medicine as my specialty.”

Samantha closed her eyes with a
wince and tried to tune out the following discussion about how thrilled her
mother was that Jonathan had decided to follow in their father’s footsteps.

She even managed to tune out most of
her mothers not so subtle hints about what she thought of Samantha’s choice of
careers and lack of a fiancé.

Their father finished his meal
sometime during the speech.Getting up
he placed his napkin on the dish and picked up the suit coat that hung off the
back of his chair.

“I’ll be back later.I have to go to the hospital to check up on
a few patients.”He announced to the
room at large and departed before anyone could say anything else.

As always, Samantha envied his
ability to retreat from these little family dinners.

Picking up where she’d left off,
Samantha’s mother continued on for a few moments with how proud both of their
parents were with Jonathan’s progress.Without pause she switched to another topic.

This time Samantha managed avoid
being caught daydreaming.

“Samantha, I got a phone call from
your sister earlier.You won’t believe
the good news she had to share!”

Samantha glanced quickly at her
brother, who looked like he was hanging off every word their mother said.No help there.

“She’s pregnant again?” she guessed,
not really caring.

Her mother paused, staring at her
with a small frown.Only then did
Samantha realize she’d committed one of the great family crimes, interrupting
her mother.

“Well, yes, she is pregnant.”The matriarch recovered quickly from her
daughter’s interruption to go on and on about how happy she was to have another
grandchild.Inevitably that quickly
changed into questions about when Samantha would be providing the family with
more children as well.

As always, the possibility of her
brother settling down and raising a family wasn’t even mentioned.

For one moment of stark insanity
Samantha was tempted to interrupt again.This time she imagined herself telling her mother off and swearing that
she’d never have a child, that she’d never marry any of their parents friends
son’s who were all in business or medicine, since she preferred women.

As
it always did, the moment passed without her jumping up and doing any such
thing.Instead she mutely listened on,
the food she was eating ash in her mouth.

Oh how she wished Carson was here!

The
other woman might be loud and obnoxious, but it would have been priceless to
see her talking with Samantha’s mother.What little of her appetite had remained fled as Samantha once again
remembered that not only would Carson not be coming to dinner, she most
probably would never see the other woman again.

Samantha had made sure of that when
she’d dumped the other woman before they could reach her parents house.

Pushing back from the table, the
former librarian, survivor of the Zombie infestation, fled the table to her old
room.Only belatedly did she remember
to stop at the base of the stairs to yell back to the formal dinning room
asking for permission to leave the table.Not waiting for an answer she hurried upstairs and slammed her bedroom
door behind her and locked it.

The room looked exactly as it had
when she’d left for University.Her
mother had decorated the rooms for each of the children.Samantha’s was done in pastels; it was
probably the most hideous thing that she could imagine.With, of course the possible exception of
her older sister’s room that was done in varying shades of pink.

No wonder Janice married the first
man she could and moved halfway across the country.

Flopping down on the single bed,
Samantha flung her arm over her eyes, trying not to listen to murmured
conversation downstairs.No doubt
Jonathan was extolling his virtues to their mother, and making sly comments at
Samantha’s expense.

It was entirely too soon when she
heard the tell tale sound of her mothers high heels coming up the polished
wooden stairs to stop outside her room.

“Samantha?”

The former librarian tried to
pretend to be a hole.

“I know you’re in there, stop acting
so childish.”

Samantha grabbed her blanket and
huddled under it.

“Fine.But I wanted you to know that your father and I are throwing a
party tomorrow night in celebration of you and your brother being back.I’ve told all of our friends you will be
here, and invited all of their sons.Make sure you’re dressed appropriately.”

With that the click of high heels on
wood receded down the hallway, leaving Samantha alone.

“I’m in hell.”

#######################################

It turned out that she was wrong.Hell wasn’t having dinner with her family in
the formal dinning room.

Hell was being forced to mill about,
being dragged back and forth by her mother, from one stiffly dressed group of
people to another for hours on end.She’d tried to hide but her brother had found her sitting on the roof
where she’d used to flee as a child.

“Mom’s looking for you,” He’d looked
so damn smug about finding her, about forcing her to endure the party with
him.He’d always been like that.

So there she was, dressed in her
best black dress that she hadn’t even realized was still in her closet, and
making small talk with the dinner guests, who seemed to be comprised of every
single eligible male that passed her mother’s qualifications.

There were a lot of them.

Her father was hold up in his study
with a bunch of his buddies; all of them silver haired or balding, telling
stories and drinking port.Samantha
wished she could flee there as she had when she was a young girl, climbing up
onto her father’s lap.

While out in the rest of the house
guests stood talking while uniformed waiters circulated among them with drinks
and food.The entire thing was being
catered of course; there was no chance that Samantha’s mother would ever deign
to prepare enough food for all of these people.The very thought of her mother and father trying to BBQ something
made her smile.

“Samantha dear, pay attention.Really….” her mother shook her head, never
once letting up on her claw like grip of her arm.Pulling her unwilling daughter with her, she brought them to
another group of chatting men and women.Idly, Samantha wondered if her mother was getting desperate, not all of
the men she was being introduced to were Japanese anymore.

Before they could reach the new
batch of guests, with their fake smiles and ever so polite conversations, a
crash resounded from the kitchen.The
waiter closest to the kitchen door slipped inside, never a good sign.

“Now what?” her mother pursed her
lips, eyes narrowing.Samantha knew
that look; it meant some unfortunate person was going to get a good taste of
her mother’s verbal lashing.“You
mingle.”She gave her daughter a push
towards the group and stalked towards the kitchen, pausing of course to
exchange pleasantries with guests as she went.

Samantha smiled to the people
nearest her “Excuse me.”She whirled
around and made good her escape.There
was no way she wasn’t going to take advantage of this perfect distraction.

Her good luck held all the way to
the back yard.The grass was as impeccable
as the rest of the house.

“Finally escaped huh?”

Samantha jerked in surprise at the
voice from the shadow, the brief flicker of flame illuminating her brother’s
face as he lit a cigarette.

“I see you didn’t stick around
either, Jonathan.”Her high heels made
walking on the lawn tricky, but she managed it.Moving away from the deck and into the shadows where her brother
was, trying to avoid being spotted.

“Since when do you smoke?”

His shrug was hard to see in the
darkness.“A while.”

They’d never been particularly
close.In fact, this was probably the
first time she’d spoken to her brother alone since two Christmases ago.The silence between them was awkward.

“So….”Carson would know how to talk to him; Carson seemed to know how
to talk to everyone.Of course, the
annoying woman wasn’t here.

“When do you go back to med school?”

The shadow shrugged again.“Not sure.”

Samantha frowned, leaning against
the side of the house.“What do you
mean, not sure?Don’t you have exams soon?”

He laughed.“Yeah.About that, I got kicked out again.”

“What!?” she looked around quickly
to see if anyone had heard her outburst then said it again a little more
quietly.“What happened?”

By which he meant that he’d make
sure Jonathan got in at another school again.

“He wasn’t happy, but you know Dad.”

Actually, Samantha was starting to
realize she didn’t.“Nice touch telling
her you were going to specialize in Internal Medicine.”

Her dry tone was lost on him.“Yeah, I thought so.”He sounded amused by it all.The things that happened around him always
seemed to amuse him.

“Hey, you know who I saw a few days
ago?That girl you were friends with in
high school.”

It was probably a good thing that it
was dark, since Samantha could feel herself glaring in the direction of his
cigarette glow.

“You mean Julia?My best friend?”

Jonathan laughed.“Yeah, that’s the one.Man she had nice breasts.”

“I can’t believe you slept with
her.”

“Awe, come on sis, you can’t still
be upset about that.I mean, it’s not
like I raped her.”

Samantha curled her fingers into
fists.“You two were having sex on my
bed!”

He laughed again.“She didn’t want to go far.”

Of course she hadn’t, she’d wanted
to make perfectly clear to Samantha that she preferred boys.It hadn’t been an accident that she’d walked
in to find the two of them going at it.

That had been the last time she’d
talked to the person who’d been her constant companion throughout high school.

“You know what Jonathan, why don’t
you just go fuck yourself.”She pushed
off the wall and started towards the deck.The party wasn’t looking so bad now.

“Ohhh…, look who’s gotten a potty
mouth.”He followed her, flicking his
cigarette butt off into the darkness.

Just before the deck she spun
around, shoving him in his chest with a finger.“I can’t believe mother still keeps telling me I should be more
like you.”

He smirked.“Well you should.At least you’d get laid more often.Besides, you shouldn’t be holier than thou.At least I didn’t get fired from being the
night shift librarian at a hospital.”

He laughed again at her surprised
look.“You should have gotten up
earlier this morning to look through the mail.You can find all sorts of interesting things.Now, I wonder what mother would say if she knew you didn’t have a
job anymore.Think she’d try to talk
Dad into paying for your graduate school?”

There wasn’t a snowballs chance in
hell of that, they both knew it.

“Go to hell.”She managed, nearly tripping on the steps up
to the deck.Her brother’s amused
laughter following her into the house.

Catching a glimpse of her mother
emerging from the kitchen, Samantha turned down the hallway to her father’s
office.There was no way that she was
going to put up with her mothers annoying habits after dealing with her
brother.

Surprisingly the office was empty.

Her
father and his friends must have gone out front to smoke their cigars.Her mother had long ago refused to allow
either him or his friends to smoke in the house no matter the reason.She disapproved of him smoking cigars on any
evening, so often he would slip out the front to smoke in peace outside.

It was a refuge, regardless of where
the old men had gone.So for the first
time in her life she stepped into her father’s private sanctum without his
permission to enter.Quietly she closed
the door behind her and leaned against it, sighing in relief when no one
followed her.

It smelled like leather, old novels
and brandy.The walls were lined with
bookshelves all of them filled with leather bound novels.A huge desk dominated one side of the room;
behind it was the tall backed chair that her father sat in.For a moment she was back in her childhood,
being called in to his office because she’d done something and her mother
wanted him to punish her for.

Often as not they’d end up talking
instead.

“Wish you’d been around more,
daddy.”

He’d been a shadow of a figure
throughout her youth, gone more often then he was there.

Something on the top of his desk
caught her attention.Every time she’d
ever come in here that desk had been meticulously clean, not a single paper on
it besides the ornate paper weights at the edge.Now there was a single manila folder on it, as if tossed down
without thought.

Curious, Samantha moved closer,
angling her head to read the file tab.

Huntington Incident.

She blinked in surprise.Huntington?That was where she’d been living when the zombies had happened.Carson, as far as she knew, still lived
there with the other members of the geek squad.

Annoyed at once again thinking of
Carson, she flipped open the folder.Each page inside was stamped in red with ‘Confidential’ and she nearly
closed it again.She would have if the
first page hadn’t had a picture of Carson on it along with notes.

Frowning she flipped through the
contents, eyes slowly widening as she saw all of the pages inside.

“What
is this?”

Pictures
of all Huntington, of the zombies that had taken it over, the people who had
died, so neatly arranged with attached notes.There were pictures of Carson, Shaggy, Jahor, Emily, and herself.The ones of them in Huntington were blurry,
carrying simple labels from where they had been taken.The one’s from the military bases that each
of them had been quarantined in after the zombie incident had ended.

She didn’t understand.Couldn’t understand why this was here, in
her father’s office, on his desk.

Mind wheeling, the former librarian
let the folder drop from her fingers back onto the desk.

Turning, she fled back into the
party, where even if the encounters were painful, there wasn’t likely to be any
more surprises.

##############################

Carson
stumbled into work; she nearly missed the doors to the morgue the first and
second time, because her depth perception was way off.On the third try she hit the doors and
stumbled on through.

One eye was swollen shut and her jaw
looked two-sizes its normal size.There
were various bruises visible on her face, and her normally cocky attitude had
been knocked down to a manageable level for the time being.Carefully she looked around the room with
her one good eye and found herself alone, well, except for the dead.There was a dead body under a sheet in the
room, a toe-tag glinting under the florescent lights.She inched over to it and nervously poked it a few times.It happily didn’t do any tricks.

With a happy sigh she eased her body
into the chair and picked up a clipboard full of notes for the overnight
staff.Thick fingers with swollen black
and blue knuckles attempted to pick up a pen, she winced as her knuckles popped
in a loud unhappy manor.

Her mother was of course fine, and
as they had sat in a jail cell until late into the morning as the police tried
to sort everything out.It had been odd
to actually spend time with her mother sober, well the first hour her mother
was sobering up wasn’t pretty, and she’d almost resorted to beating someone
with her shoe so she could get thrown into solitary.After the first hour her mother had comedown from her usual
drunken state, she found herself in a cell with someone who was just about a
complete stranger.In those few hours
they had together she met this odd woman she had a few childhood memories of,
who was sweet, charming, and wickedly intelligent.Sadly she knew that person would be gone by the time she got
home.Of course her drunken mother, was
happy with her just the way she was, her sober mother was disappointed she was
wasting her potential as a morgue attendant.

In a fit of self-pitying anger, she
tossed the pen she had just managed to pick up across the room.

As the pen arched through the air,
the double doors into the morgue swung open.Jahor stepped inside frantically wiping crumbs off his shirt from the
muffin he’d been eating on his way into work.

Carson winced and turned around in
her desk so she wouldn’t have to bare witness to the pain and suffering she was
going to cause.

Looking up, the young Pakistani man
started to say a cheery hello; only it ended up coming out more as a yelp as
the pen struck him between the eyes.“Hell-loly shit! Ouch, what the hell was that for?”

Carson just kept focused on the
clipboard in front of her.“Ohhh.You said a bad word.”She snickered.

Grumbling Jahor picked up the lethal
assault weapon pen and chucked it back at Caron’s head.

Carson gave a startled cry and
nearly passed out in her chair, after the pen hit a sensitive overly abused
portion of her head.

“Crap, Jay, you spend the holidays
with your mother or what?” she wined.

“Yes, I spent the break with my
mother.I’ll have you know it’s only a
holiday if you’re American.What do I
care that a bunch of sexually repressed white people, hopped up on religion and
recently kicked out of their mother country, crashed on this rock and then
spread like a genital disease on a cheap hooker?”

Carson cracked a grin and then
winced.“Apparently you care a lot
about it, ‘cause you spent you’re whole ‘holiday’ thinking up that diatribe.”

Jahor pulled a chair over to the
desk and sat down.“True, so did it
sound properly pissed of and self-righteous?”

“Uh huh.”She grunted studying the paperwork in front of her

Jahor frowned and then tried to make
a grab for the clipboard.“I’m the
clipboard junkie not you.Are we in
trouble or something?” He made another grab, only to be blocked as Carson
turned away from his reaching arm.“Give me my security blanket.We
have rules I need to check and double check.”Frustrated he grabbed the back of her chair and spun her around.His jaw dropped and he retracted his hands
as if he had been burned, and muttered something in his native language that
sounded suspiciously like a prayer from evil.“Did you sleep with the fire chief’s daughter again, the one that’s
married to that linebacker?” He edged away from Carson not wanting to be
between her and a possible bullet.

“Ha, ha,” she said drolly, looking
at him with her one good eye at the moment.“That was an accident.She said
she was single.She mentioned nothing
about a one-night stand, and she sure wasn’t a virgin when it came to… you
know… with a woman.”Even though she
tried to sugarcoat her words Jahor turned a bright red.She cleared her throat.

”Anyways, I’ll have you know I got this at a day after Thanksgiving Sale riot.”

“I thought the American custom was
to just spend lots of money on crap they didn’t need.When did they put the rioting and wrestling in?”

She frowned.“That’s a new tradition.I think they started it this year.”

Jahor nodded, but took another step
back.

The double door opened again and
Emily strode in like the Princess of the Morgue that she was.She and Carson looked at each other and at
the exact same time said.“My evening
so beat your evening.”

Carson quirked her left eyebrow, the
one that didn't hurt, and said."I
started a riot waiting in line for an after Thanksgiving sale to start, got
beat up, picked up by the police and spent the rest of the day in jail with my
mother who was sober for about the last four hours.”

The Goth girl hoped up onto the
nearest metal table used to perform autopsies on cadavers and swung her legs
back and forth, popping her bubble gum as she did so."I had ten times as good an evening as you did then.”She cocked her head to one side considering
it then grinned."Yup, ten times
as good, even though the police thing was cool.Did you see our favorite cop?"

"The one that is always
threatening to shoot me or the one I let handcuff me for naughty
endeavors?"Carson asked wanting
to clarify what constituted favorite.

"The
one who went through the zombie attack with us?"

"Oh, her.Ms. Shoot Carson.Nope didn't see her.Maybe she got lucky and got a day shift.”Carson shifted trying to find a comfortable position then gave up
and started just to hope parts of her body would go numb."So dish.Why was your night better than mine?"

Emily snuck a look at Jahor through
her dread locks.“I got laid.”She proclaimed proudly, grinning evilly as
the Pakistani man turned bright red and sputtering.“And I had a great time with her and her friends.”

Carson was normally amused by the
flip in gender-roles in the morgue, normally the guys were bragging about time
in the sheets, but here it was the other way around and poor Jay had to suck it
up.This time she was annoyed, she
hadn't had any in a while, and considering how much of her higher brain
functions were spent thinking about sex, this just made her grumpy.

"So
did the vampire wanna-be's manage to raise that demon?” she said ignoring the
whole satisfied smirk Emily was sporting, plus she hated the dreads, she
preferred the pigtails.

“Demon?”Emily looked at her oddly.“What demon?”

"That's what I thought.Just a lot of crap on their part.Besides after those zombies the last thing
we need is a demon roaming around, causing chaos and destruction.”She shifted again her body parts not going
numb."Jay, since you are
absolutely mortified by this conversation, will you please go get me
some ice? I hurt.”She
whined.

“Your wish is my… well not really my
command but whatever it takes to get out of this conversation.”Jay nearly leapt for the door.

“Seriously, what demon?You sure you didn’t hit your head really
hard last night?”